Goal #1 – Blog more.

Status – Check.  However, I did say that I wanted to blog at least once a week, and I’ve definitely fallen off that pace in the last two months or so.  I was pretty good about it straight through April, and then it just kind of got away from me a bit.  So I’ve got some work cut out for me if I want to continue this one.

Goal #2 – I want to move up from within Best Buy.

Status – Check.  Beginning last month, I’ve been working as a Supervisor in the Pasadena store, managing the Lifestyles Department (which covers Cameras, Mobile Electronics, Car Fi, Appliances and Gaming.  It’s been a really fun ride thus far, and despite the commute, I’m glad that I got the position.  I really think that it’s a much better fit for me as far as my abilities go, and I am happier going to work each day.  The only drawback has been the sheer amount of time that I’ve spent away from the home.  I miss being able to come home on my lunch breaks to check on the family, and the hours are definitely longer.  But the financial benefits help offset those to a great degree, which means that this summer I’ll have much more opportunity to hang with the family on the off days, and actually do stuff that doesn’t involve looking at the four walls of our house.

Goal #3 – I want to go on a vaction.

Status – Pending, but will be marked off with a Check this Saturday.  We’re leaving for Park City, UT on the 15^th and come back on the 22^nd.  So this one will be marked off the list in just a few days.  I’m totally looking forward to it as well.

Goal #4 – I want to find a hobby.

Status – Fail.  You could say that date day’s with Traci down at the Happiest Place on Earth is a hobby…but really not so much. I was REALLY vague on this one in my original blog post, and I said that I’d have to work on this through writing on PablosPlace.  But I’ve spent NO effort in developing something.  If anything, I think that I’ve really retreated a little bit more in this category in that I don’t really have much of anything going on with me outside of my work or my family.  I’m looking to find something that I enjoy doing, and simply do it.  But I definitely need to work on this one to accomplish something by the end of the year.

Goal #5 – I want to be a better husband and a better father.

I’m not really sure how to quantify this one, but I’d say that I’m doing the best job that I can.  During the times that I’m free to hang with the kids and the Mrs., I’d say that I’m actively involved and engaged.  I made a point to be there for everyone’s graduations and big events thus far in the year, and the family vacation is coming where I’ll have a lot of undivided time with everyone.  But I still need to pull myself out of our bedroom with the video games, which I’ve played too many of.  It’s still great to have the system, but I don’t really need to be on it as much as I am when everyone else is here in the house.  I want to be more involved in the lives of the kids than that.

Long Term Goal Check

Long Term Goal # 1 – I want to start down the path of becoming financially budgeted.

Status – SO CLOSE.  With the income tax refund we got this year, we were able to play catchup on all of our bills.  And with only one check having come through with this new job, it’s hard to say that we’ve finally balanced our budgets.  But I CAN say that since the first of the year, we’re caught up on all of our bills, and we’re getting through month after month…just with a smallish amount left over every month, and a worry that we won’t make it till the next paycheck with regularity.  But the good news is, we always seem to get there, and things should be trending towards a much more balanced budget.  Something to think about for 2014 is dealing with a Credit Improvement company of some sort to help us with our credit scores.  I think that’s an absolute must starting with our tax returns next year.

Long Term Goal # 2 – I want to buy a house.

Status – Not even close.  Given that we’re still making our finances balanced, and we’re talking about credit repair, I think we’ve got years to go before this becomes a possibility.  But I want to leave this goal on here simply because it’s something that I want at some point, and I think it’s important that I focus on working toward that goal.  Even if it is a long way off.

Long Term Goal # 3 – I want to take the family to see 3 things, Washington D.C., Disneyworld in Orlando, and a North East trip that involves visiting with my sister in Philadelphia.

Status – Nope, Nope, and Nope.  Cheryl may end up moving here by the first of the year, but she also may not.  I chatted with her last week and her plan is to move from Philly back to Southern California, but they’re a long way away from making that one a reality.  But it may be something that they accomplish.  If they do, then that doesn’t leave me with a great deal of need to visit Philly anymore.  I mean, I could still take the kids to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and stuff, but that would probably all change if Cheryl moves here.  We may revise this to New York or Boston, which I’ve always wanted to see, and never have.  Regarding D.C. and Orlando….we’ll see where we’re at in 2014.  But it certainly isn’t a reality this year.

So far, not so bad.  I know what areas I need to work on, and what areas I need to continue to improve upon.  I may need to set down and create a whole new set of “second half of the year” goals at this point because honestly, I’ve accomplished more this year than I’ve given myself credit for.  Hopefully that trend continues.

Several years ago, my friend Andrew finally convinced me to get a twitter account.  I didn’t need one.  Twitter was a fledgling little operation in comparison to today’s behemoth of a social media enterprise.  I wasn’t really interested in finding out about what people were doing every second of the day, and I wasn’t interested in posting the exact same as a response.  But in the end, I was awed by the concept that it was a “micro-blog”, that allowed you to express “what are you doing” 140 characters at a time. 

Shortly after I got plugged into the Twittersphere, I developed a small following.  I eventually found the Twitter Poker Tour group and got really plugged into opportunities that I would have never expected.  The whole social media world became my job, my new reality.  And before I realized it, my real life was my social media life.  I’m not sure exactly when that happened, but every detail of every aspect of my life was involved with who was doing what on twitter, and waiting for anyone in my list of people that I followed to simply post something new to the site, waiting with baited breath to see who was going to the next person to communicate with me on my timeline.

It became a necessity to post all the time, about everything.  And as the simplicity of twitter became more popular, the complexity of twitter became apparent.  Twitter has since exploded into one giant conversation among the entire world that is simply too difficult to follow or keep up with any longer.  It’s become so popular that live shows have to read twitter posts in the middle of their programs or show a “Twitter Crawl” at the bottom of the screens.  Baseball games show tweets from people at the game on the jumbo-tron.  Large LCD billboards display live twitter feeds, and every advertisement encourages people to follow them at @(fill in the name here).  It’s all the rage.

What I’ve learned is that this new rage to get to as many followers as you possibly can makes absolutely no sense any longer to me. I still like the micro blog aspect, and I still enjoy getting the messages in my replies, but I no longer initiate conversations like I used to.  But I also don’t want to get back to a point that I was so starved to see what was in my feed either.  So for me, it was simply about hitting the reset button on twitter, and starting over.

I unfollowed everyone on my twitter account today, and I’m going to give some thought as to whom, if anyone really, that I want to follow in my feed.  I still use twitter to check on trending things in this world, like the news, sports, and honestly the poker world.  But my life has really moved away from poker altogether, and I want to distance myself from the game as much as I can, and focus more on my family.

This year, I have my final two children leaving elementary school and graduating into Jr. High.  And then my other two girls will be going onto High School this fall as well.  I have only got a few more years left where my kids are actually going to want to spend time with me, and I don’t want there to be any distractions from my family, which is what really matters to me the most.  I don’t want to miss opportunities with the people around me because I’m so intently focused on the noise that is coming from my iPhone.  I’ll still mini-blog the cool stuff, more as a keep sake for me.  And I’ll likely find a couple of follows that will keep my plugged into the things that I’m interested in hearing about.  But I don’t really need anything else from twitter any longer.  And so, I’m moving on.

This isn’t really the direction that I saw this post heading, or even something that I had planned out or given a lot of thought to.  But I was instantly happy with the decision and I’m looking forward to not being tethered to my social media feed.

Mother’s Day just passed and it turned out to be a very good one.  I’ve never been to keen on Mother’s Day at all since I have such a strange relationship with my own mom.  It’s tough watching all the stuff on TV about people who oogle over their own mother’s and are thankful for the relationships that they have with their mom’s, while mine tends to be nothing other than a crazy drama creator.  There’s a big part of me that wishes that I could have a good relationship with my mom, but it always ends up the same way.  She creates enormous amounts of guilt that send me into a deep depression, she stirs up drama that doesn’t exist causing relational hardships in my marriage and in my friendships, and is compulsive about her need to continually control my life in unhealthy ways.  I still love my mom, but I’ve also realized that I’m a much happier and better person when she isn’t a part of my life because of the intense mental instability that she brings when she forces her will upon our relationship.  It’s suffocating, and it destroys me.  Which is why we’re better off not having spoken in years.

That aside, it WAS a good Mother’s Day as I’d mentioned.  Emma and Abby went with their mom to celebrate the day, and I took Traci, Kelli and Nikki on a car ride up the coast as we stopped into Solvang.  I’ve driven through Solvang a couple of times, and stopped in once at Paula’s Pancake House for breakfast during the weekend that I was up their with the boys for Tim’s bachelor party.  But I’ve never really walked the streets of the town before.  Mother’s Day was crowded, but not overly so, but it was also in the mid-90′s that day, and it was sticky and kind of uncomfortable to say the least, so our time walking about was only a couple of hours.

We first stopped into the Thomas Kincade art gallery where we showed the kids the Disney collections that Kincade had worked on.  Traci and I had first encountered the collection of pieces when we were in Las Vegas the last time, at a Kincade gallery in between the Pallazo and the Venetian.  The kids were amazed at how different the paintings looked in the different lighting conditions, and as the light was adjust through a dimmer switch, to see how the painting accounted for the details of the different times of day.   As Disney nuts in this house, it was simply cool to begin with, but for the kids it was even more so.

After the art gallery, we wandered through the streets looking at the small quaint shops along the way.  Some were just knick-knacks and do-dads, others were novelty places like a store that sold only socks (and a large variety of different themed socks at that).  And finally we came upon the real reason that Traci wanted to go to Solvang to begin with, the fudge.  She has a little tiny candy shop inside the city that she hadn’t been to since she was a child, and we stopped into get some of the fudge that she would share with the kids.  Despite the fact that store had giant signs that said that they use special ingredients so that the fudge wouldn’t melt, the weather conditions of the day showed us that with actual science, chocolate fudge DOES melt when it’s hot outside.  After a couple of hours of wandering through the town, we hopped back into the car and headed south.

On the way back, we connected with my dad and step-mom and stopped into their house for a visit.  My step-brother Kyle and his wife Jennifer were already there with their two boys, Hunter and Liam, whom I couldn’t believe how much they’d grown, despite having seen them regularly on Facebook.  It’s simply much different witnessing it in person.  We stayed for dinner which was barbequed chicken, salmon, and steak, with risotto and veggies.  It was a fantastic meal, made more magnificent by the company that we kept, and we were extremely saddened by the fact that the visit had to end.  We were forced to get back into the Valley to meet my kids as it was Sunday evening, and the kids had school the next day.  But overall, I was very happy that we had the opportunity to visit with my Dad and Colette.  It was a joyous time.

On Tuesday, I started the new job in Pasadena.  It took a little while to learn everyone’s names and to observe their behaviors to figure out things to work on with the new team, but ultimately, I’m really happy about the new gig.  I really feel like it is a much better use of my abilities within the organization as I have the freedom to simply focus on coaching other employees to better themselves as sales representatives. There is a lot of work that I didn’t expect, but ultimately when I’m there, I’m very happy that I’m doing what I’m doing, which is something that I haven’t been able to say for quite some time.

The only downfall thus far has been the amount of time that it has taken away from the family.  Since I started the gig on Tuesday, I really haven’t had the ability to interact with the kids, with the exception of the few minutes of drop off time at school in the morning.  I haven’t had an off day until today.  And Saturday was the longest of the days where I left the house at 6:30am for a store meeting, only to return home at 10:45pm.  It’s a lot more hours, and it’s about a 40 minute commute one way, so the more time that I spend at the job, the less time that I have at home.  I’ve been used to the “I’ll just run by home for 20 minutes or so during my lunch break, pop in on the family and get a little family time,” but that just isn’t reasonable anymore.  The Northridge store was 5 minutes from home, whereas this one requires day long commitments, and odd hours where I generally leave the house around 10 or 11am, and don’t return home until 9 or 10pm on the regular.

The upside is that I’m making a lot more money doing what I’m doing, and I’m enjoying what I do a great deal more.  The balance that I’m going to have to find is going to have to be in finding my time during my off hours with my family.  Because I derive so much personal joy and satisfaction from that area, it’s a must in my life.  I’m really looking forward to the family vacation in June, which I think will come at a perfect time where I’m really needing it.

Things coming up include the kids “graduating” this year.  I put it in parenthesis just because Abby and Nikki are only going from Elementary School to Junior High, and Kelli and Emma are only going from Junior High to High School.  But for them, it’s the culmination of a chapter of their lives as they move onto a completely new campus for the next few years, and the school’s really do make it a big “to-do” with graduation ceremonies to boot.  The older girls in fact recently had grad night this past Friday at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and it conjured up the memories of when I had my elementary and Jr. High “graduations.”  And it leaves me thinking why we celebrate these occasions the way that we do.  That perhaps is another story for another day.  Grad days are just a few weeks away though, so we’ll see what happens as we get closer.

That’s all for now.  Hopefully I’ll be able to pencil in the time to spend here with some more regularity.  If not, I’m certain that I’ll just keep the site on pins and needles as we wait breathlessly to see what it going to poor out of my head the next time my fingers start striking the keyboard.

The new job begins on Tuesday.  Technically it starts Sunday, but because I have Sunday and Monday off, it really begins at noon on Tuesday.  I’ve got some mixed feelings about it actually, but overall I’m happy and excited.  Everyone keeps asking if I’m excited about the new gig, and honestly, I don’t know that excited is the right word.  I’m more feeling a sense of relief that it’s finally happened, and I’m eager to get the new thing underway.  But I’m lacking in excitement over the commute, which I hope will be easy.  Anyway, there is a bunch of e-learnings that I need to take for the new gig, so I’ll get started on those in a bit.

This past week was Traci’s 36^th birthday, and we had a fun time escaping just the two of us.  I was off on Thursday, and it was fun to simply just hang out with her and eat a Big Thunder Ranch Barbeque, a place we’d just never stopped into before.  If you’ve never been, it’s worth the price of admission.  It’s all you can eat Barbeque Ribs and Chicken, very good Cole Slaw and Baked Beans, and some delicious Cornbread.  Very southern and country, but done very well.  They have musicians providing unique entertainment throughout the meal, and the service is also very good.  It’s a little on the costly side in comparison to other places that you have the option of eating at, but it’s worth the slight uptick on cost.  Every once in a while, it’ll be something that we get back to.

Last bit of interesting news was on the kids front.  Abby was named Student of the Month this past month, and we went to an awards assembly at her school for her.  It’s one of those awards that if you’re a well behaved child long enough in the school year, you’re recognized as being the “Student of the Month.”  It’s a proud moment for the kids as they get a certificate of achievement in front of their friends, and each of the kids family gets their hand shaken as they take photos of the moment.   Overall, it’s a cool little award that they dole out, and we’re proud of the way that Abby has approached the school year….for the most part.

Kelli had the biggest news of the family though as she was named to the Chatsworth High School Junior Varsity Cheer Team.  Both she and Emma will be incoming freshman this year at CHS, and tryouts were this past week.  She’d worked really hard with her mom, and it paid off as she made the team.  It’s going to be a VERY expensive endeavor, but it also means that we’ll be attending a lot of football and basketball games throughout the year, and likely some other activities as we watch Kelli cheer.  We’re hopeful that Emma will continue on with band as she seems to enjoy playing the flute, but not really enjoy her teacher, who is sucking all the fun out of the experience for her.  So it remains to be seen if this is something that she’ll stick with or not, though we really hope that she does.

That’s that for now.  Hopefully this next week will have some more fun stuff to add than these last two weeks which were pretty much just working the entire time.  Until then, I’m Seacrest Out.

There is a story about how Michael Jordan failed to make the cut of his High School varsity basketball team as a sophomore.  At 5’11”, the adolescent Jordan simply wasn’t good enough to play ball with the best in his school in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Motivated by the fact that he wasn’t “good enough,” Jordan went on to lead the Junior Varsity team while tallying several 40-point games, grew by 4 inches in between his sophomore and junior years, and would return to make the team, and be selected as a McDonald’s All American after averaging a triple-double in his senior season.  Oh, and then he went on to be a six-time NBA Champion, winning the NBA Finals MVP award in all six times that he was there, along with all the other accolades doled upon what would be the greatest basketball player that anyone has ever seen play the game. 

There were a ton of quotes that I kept thinking about as I applied for the ninth time to become a supervisor at Best Buy.

“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” – Babe Ruth

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – Mark Twain

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison

And especially:

“It’s not whether you get knocked down…it’s whether you get up.” – Vince Lombardi

I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t evaluated quitting Best Buy after having my value consistently overlooked.  Each successive failure at each interview, watching underqualified applicant after underqualified applicant pass me over for opportunity after opportunity, it stung a little more each time.  And failing to receive a valid reason as to why, that’s ultimately what motivated me to continue pressing on, and make certain that I achieved the goal of moving up within the company, and to continue to apply, interview, and to grow.  And now, I got it.

The call came in yesterday a little after noon, as I was working with a customer.  I had to let the initial call go to voicemail and call them back, but I had great hope for what the news was going to be.  “Well, we’ve finished our round of interviews for the position, and after careful consideration,” he said, with my heart beating out of my chest, “we would like to extend to you the offer of the Lifestyles Supervisor position.”  That was it.  The couple of years of work that I’d put in resulted in a payout and a position of validation of my work, effort, and finally my ability.  It’s always a great feeling getting the call that you’ve got the job that you’re after, and it took a little while for the excitement to kick in, as immediately I was simply…grateful.

I was grateful to all of the people that had continued to encourage me to move on.  Grateful for Chris, our store manage in the Home Business Group who had originally said that I should apply for the job…because I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t pointed it out.  I was grateful for all that I had learned from my supervisors within my store, Dani (who hired me), Laura, Devin, and most recently Jon and Gabe who provided me with extra levels of encouragement throughout the process.  Thankful to the other leaders in my store, Corrine, Lawrence, Juliette, and our GM Kevin.  And I was grateful to each of the employees in every area of our store that taught me different things about Best Buy, and how it operated.  Specifically people like Ruben, Doug, and Andy, the full timers that really showed me how the business operated and functioned.

I then became thankful to my wife and my kids, who provided me with unparalleled encouragement, support, and love, and I couldn’t wait to share the news with them.  I became thankful for all of my friends and family that have encouraged me to stay with it, and given me small little messages of hope either on Facebook, or in my living room or at a poker table.  I didn’t intend for this to be like an Oscar speech, but in that moment of hearing the words that I was the person that they were hiring, each one of those people swam through my mind immediately, and I had a hard time focusing on the conversation that I was having.  I was overwhelmed with a great sense of thankfulness, and the excitement, well that would come later I suppose.  Because I was just experiencing an immense sense of “thank God, it’s about time.”

As I hung up the phone, I went in to tell my GM and my Supervisor of the news, and everyone was congratulatory.  I sent a text to Traci to let her know.  Then I bumped into Chris while walking through the store, who couldn’t have been more proud and gave me a giant hug after the handshake of congratulations.  I felt proud, accomplished, and ultimately appreciative of what I had been given…but still not excited.

I guess that as I look at it now, it wasn’t as if I ever dreamed that this would be what I would be doing when I grew up.  I mean, if you think about it, when you’re playing town with your friends when you’re a child, and one person says “I want to be the police man,” and another says “I want to be the fireman,” and the other says “I want to be ______.”  There isn’t the kid that raises their hand that says, “I want to work at Best Buy.”  I suppose that’s the case for anyone who has ever worked there, that it’s not something that they aspire to be.  It just sort of happens that way.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of the work that I do.  Quite the opposite, but I really feel that my journey with the company is merely beginning.

As grateful as I am to have this new position, and yes, now there is some level of excitement, I really feel that it is just a step (albeit a larger one) into something bigger and better.  I can see myself with this company long-term, and really establishing myself as one of the company’s best leaders.  I can see myself ultimately taking this position and running with it to further my career.  And I can see the opportunity that I now have, to coach and to train people to help others, and leave my imprint on employees and other customers for years to come.  I’m happy with where I am at, but I am now finally excited for the direction that I am heading.  And it’s been a long while since I’ve been able to say that.

In the end, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that has encouraged me along my journey.  I really do feel like so many people were cheering for me, and I can’t tell you how good that feels to simply be loved by everyone.  Every conversation, text, tweet, and Facebook message sunk in, and I am now looking forward to making everyone even more proud as I continue the successes that I’ve had, and getting excited for what is to come.

“So, what’s new with you?”

“Nothing really.  How about you?  Anything new?”

“Nope…pretty much the same here too.”

That’s kind of been my life the last few weeks, and a major reason that I’ve been unmotivated to blog about it.  Perhaps that’s the difference between the skilled writer and the ones that are just blogging hacks (*raises hand for the role of the latter*) is that skilled writers, and to some degree conversationalists, find areas of interest to talk about when there aren’t any new topics.  And while I suppose that I could have written about how I’m totally geeking out on my PlayStation 3 with NBA2k12, and how that game has me simulating a ton of basketball in a mock 62-team tournament, I don’t know that it’s really a topic that I want to write about (regardless of the amount of enjoyment that I’m getting out of it). 

The last couple of weeks have been pretty dull to say the least.  Since Nikki’s sleepover birthday party, it’s been back to the drawing board with balancing our small budget of income, and taking care of the basic essentials for the kids as they’re gearing up for their graduations this year.  Both Nikki and Abby are moving from Elementary to Jr. High School and Kelli and Emma are moving on from Jr. High to High School, and are loving all of the year end activities that are costing us a bloody fortune.  Between grad nights, formals, class trips, parties, graduation dresses, shoes, yearbooks….it’s a non-stop carrousel of cost followed by cost, and it seems to never be ending.  Thus is the joy of being a parent I suppose.

But aside from that, there are a few pieces of new information that I felt coming here to write about might make for worthy subject matter.  The first is that Traci and I booked our next family vacation for this coming June, and the second is about an interview that I had for my ninth attempt at a supervisor position.  So here it goes.

The last two years, when it’s come to family vacations we just haven’t had the ability to pull them off.  Three years ago, we took the entire lot of us to Sedona, Arizona and had an amazing time.  We spent a day at the Grand Canyon, and the remainder of the time in an amazingly beautiful city enjoying each other and the activities, and the swimming pools.  But the following year, we ended up not booking a date because Traci didn’t want to miss out on her step-brother P.J. who was planning a trip to Southern California (which ended up not taking place, and us subsequently not booking anything either), and then last year we were just too flat broke to book anything at all.  This year, one of my January goals was that I wanted to take the family on a vacation, and we finally got something on the calendar to do just that.

On June 15^th to June 22^nd, the family is jumping in the van together and heading to the home of the 2002 Winter Olympics, Park City, Utah.  We’ve already got some of the activities that we’ve budgeted for planned away, but we’re basically saving the news on those because that’s what we’re using as a graduation present for our kids.  So because two of them are already old enough that they’re on Facebook and have capability of getting to this blog with relative ease, I’m not going to spoil the surprises, but I will say that I’m already looking forward to a couple of months from now and enjoying some quality family time.  I can’t tell you how happy it makes me feel as a parent and a husband to have the ability to do this for the family.  And the memories that we’ll create for the kids will last a lifetime.

Park City wasn’t ever one of the places that I would’ve circled as a bucket list destination, but it was a financially viable one considering that places like Orlando, Florida (Disney World), Washington D.C., New York, or Europe, Australia, or some remote Island community weren’t really viable options.  Flying six people somewhere just isn’t very cheap as it turns out.  But I am thrilled that we’ll get the experiences of once again vacationing as a family and I’m looking forward to it a great deal.

Hopefully by the time that the vacation comes along, I’ll have the ability to really enjoy it with a new position that compensates me a great deal more in salary than that of my current wages of my position within Best Buy.  On Saturday, I interviewed for the Lifestyles Supervisor position and it went extremely well.  The position would be in the Pasadena store, a Big Box store which would mean more pay than some of the smaller locations, but it would also mean a commute of roughly 45 minutes to an hour one way.  For about 5 ½ years I had commuted into Downtown Los Angeles and I’m more than familiar with the grind of the LA Commute, but having been able to enjoy a 5 minute door to door experience for my job the last 2 years, I’m not exactly looking forward to it should the job be offered to me.  But no news has come forward from the position as of yet anyway, other than my store manager coming to me on Saturday to tell me that the person that I interviewed with earlier in the day had called her to say that I performed VERY well in the interview, and that I was a legitimate candidate for the position.  While that seems like good news, it is also the same news that I have received the previous 8 times that I’ve interviewed for one of these positions, and each time has ended with the result that “We think you’re a highly qualified candidate, and we know that you’ll be a supervisor very soon, but we decided to go with someone else.”  So bottom line, I’m not really getting my hopes too high here, other than to say that if I don’t get the position, I’m hopeful that I can at the very least get back some constructive criticisms that I can actually use in my next interview.

But that’s the basic gist of what’s happened the last two weeks.  A lot of work, a lot of dad time, and a whole lot of nothing else happening other than watching the 97-98 Spurs led by David Robinson and a young Tim Duncan take three out of five games (with the fifth being an overtime win) against the best teams of Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets from the 90’s.  Or watching the Shaq and Kobe Lakers get past the 84-85 76’ers led by Dr. J.  I know, I’m a geek….and I love it.

When last I wrote, I talked about two topics, and left out a ton of details.  One detail of the past week that I want to revisit was a couple of times where I felt fantastic about being a husband and a father.  Traci and I took advantage of a couple nights stay at the Palazzo Hotel in Vegas, a gift she had received by being a member of the studio audience of the CBS Television Show “The Talk.”  She wrapped up the certificate this past Christmas for me to unveil, and we were finally able to make use of it while the kids had the week off for spring break, and they could all be taken care of.  So Traci and I spent a couple of great nights in Las Vegas, and we had a blast. 

The first night we arrived, we met a friend of mine that I’d made through the Twitter Poker Tour.  I’ve followed Steve Brogan and had many conversations with him through our blogs (he runs Dad’s Poker Blog), and through Twitter and the TPT forums.  I’ve always respected and admired Steve who was one of the original mainstays of the TPT during its hay day, but up until this past Monday night, we’d never met in person.  Steve was living in the New England region, and I had never really been that far or to that corner of the U.S. before, so it was virtually that we kindled our friendship.  When he saw that I was coming into town through one of my twitter posts, he’d asked to me meet both he and his wife for dinner, and I couldn’t say no.

Traci and I arrived at Steve and his wife Diane’s favorite little Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in Las Vegas, a place I’d never heard of called Pho Kim Long located on Spring Mountain Drive.  Despite my many trips to Las Vegas, I’d never heard of the place, let alone ventured to it.  It was off the Strip by a couple blocks, and located in a clearly Asian themed area of the city, but we were simply excited to meet Steve and Diane for the meal.  The food was exceptional, the company even better, and I’m sad that the encounter had to end at some point.  It was fantastic to sit and to fellowship, and finally have the opportunity to meet in person.  We departed with the promises of “next time we’re in town, we need to do this again,” and I hope that it wasn’t just words, because I would enjoy our next rendezvous.  But it was a tremendous way to kick start our trip.

Traci and I returned to the hotel to see what we might be able to get done, but at 9:30pm on a Monday night, a show wasn’t really much of an option.  So we wandered up and down Las Vegas Blvd, stopping into the Bellagio to see the gardens as well as taking in some of the sights that are always amusing as you travel the Las Vegas Strip.  In the morning, we woke and headed out for breakfast, and then stopped into see a display of National Geographic’s 50 greatest Photographs of all time.  The display was as if it was a tiny picture museum, with each of the organizations prized photographs enlarged and mounted on the wall.  Below them was an explanation of how the photo came to be and the story behind it.  It was a truly unique and powerful exhibit, and one that I’d recommend to anyone that might happen into the Venetian hotel.  We spent a good hour or so pouring through all the photos and videos, and we came away very pleased that we stopped in.

For lunch, we met with Traci’s good friend from high school Melissa Barzekoff, her sister Deandra and her new 8 month old daughter.  We dined at the Grand Lux Café in the Palazzo, and we had a fantastic meal with a great number of laughs along the way.  The lunch spilled over to a longer visit as the girls all joined us up in our room for a little bit longer visit, until  an 8-month old did what an 8-month old does, declare that it’s time to go with cries of “find me a nap time somewhere.”  We said our goodbyes, and Traci and I dressed down to head to the pool and hangout for a while before our show.

At 7:30, we headed to the theatre to see “Rock of Ages.”  I didn’t have a clue as to what to expect from the show, having never heard of it prior to Traci winning the tickets.  The first act was rather dull, and I was sorely disappointed that we hadn’t purchased tickets to some other show, and scrapped the free tickets that we were given from the comp.  I remember leaning into Traci and saying that “this is really corny,” at some point during intermission, but we stuck it through and I’m glad that we did.  The second act was actually very enjoyable, and couldn’t have been made possible without the first act.  We exited the theatre happy that we came, and thoroughly enjoying the performance.  As we left without anything in mind, we made our was down the Strip again and stopped into the Dualing Piano bar at Harrah’s for a drink and to enjoy the festivities.   After which, we retired to our hotel room early, as we’d be heading out of town early in the morning.

The drive home was fun and quick, but we needed to pick up the children for our second show in as many nights.  We’d purchased seats for “Beauty and The Beast” at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood back in December for the kids for Christmas, and we were putting them to use that Wednesday night.  As we arrived home, the girls all showered and changed into their Theater outfits and I was again reminded of the fact that I am living with 5 women, and stunning women they are.  All dressed up, we took the gang over to the Claim Jumper near us for a meal, and followed that with a trip down to the theater.  The girls felt all grown up and were in a state of awe, having never really had that type of experience before.  It was a fantastic night out, and we returned home to simply just crash as we were exhausted from having been on the go for basically 3 straight days.   But it was packed full of fun and excitement and memories that will never be forgotten.

The days after were followed by going back to work, and life getting back to normal.  Traci and I are now scratching our heads as we’re trying to get this new jewelry business together.  It’s a tremendous opportunity for us, but we do need to sit down and carve out a business plan to see about making the thing actually work.  Because the way that we’re going about it now just isn’t producing any results.  That’s it for now.  In the next blog, I’ll chat a little about finally cutting the cord from Time Warner Cable, and making the switch back to AT&T.  And I’ll have a few more stories to recant and some future plans that we’ve got in mind.

I want to begin by finally wishing a farewell to Traci’s Grandmother Lucille Jaeger.  Lucille has been holding onto life for more than a year, suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia and being bed ridden for that entire time frame.  Finally early on Friday morning, she breathed her final breathes before passing away at home, where her husband of roughly 60 years was with her, as was her son Phil (Traci’s dad), and her daughter Sue (who had been staying with them for nearly the last month or so.

While Traci and I have been out to visit with Lucille and Bob nearly weekly, the visits had become more of a chance to meet with Bob as his wife began to fade away, often spending the majority of our visits to their house asleep, and even in consciousness with very little recognition of anything or anyone.  Alzheimer’s is a strange and terrible disease that affects the elderly that leaves very little to be explained of just what exactly is understood by the afflicted or by those that surround them.  But at 98 years of age, Lucille had a wonderful life filled with an amazing amount of joy and happiness.  Her husband Bob is struggling with the loss, as is expected, and we can do little other than offer our thoughts and prayers to console him.  It’s never easy losing a loved one, and it must be impossible to watch them struggle, especially when so much of your life has been spent with one person.  But in all, Bob handled himself admirably, and it fills my heart with great joy to see the love in his actions, in the way that he treated his wife in her final years.  It was very apparent in the way that he cared for her that this was going to be exceptionally difficult for him, and now while we celebrate the life that Lucille led, our eyes have turned to Bob as he mourns the death of his wife.  We hope that he will be able to pull through it.  In the meantime, Lucille will be fondly remembered, and dearly missed.

Traci made her final visit with her Grandmother on Thursday, just a few hours before she would eventually pass away.  Usually I would go with her on these visits, but this time I couldn’t because I had an interview for the Porter Ranch Best Buy Lifestyles Supervisor.  It was my eight interview for a Supervisor position with the company, and the interview could not have gone any better.  I met the Store Supervisor of the Home Business Group for the first time, and we got along wonderfully.  It was truly one of the best interviews that I’ve ever given, not just among my Best Buy interviews, but overall.  However, the call came on Sunday that they had elected to go in a different direction and I was passed over for the role an eighth consecutive time.  I took this one in stride, having basically given up on the idea that I was going to actually get the post.  I have a feeling that if I was truly in consideration for the job, that they would just tell me it’s mine to have by now.  But it also makes me not want to apply for any other supervisor positions until I hear those words ahead of time, which clearly wasn’t the goal of the interview process.

Bottom line, I know that I was the best candidate and the most accomplished and experienced candidate to walk through those doors.  I also believe that no one could have interviewed for the position as well as I did.  But none of that mattered.  At the end of the day, the decision was already made in whom they were going to hire, and I was again a dead man walking.  While it was nice to get the phone call from the interviewer who would let me know that I had “all the qualities that they were looking for in a supervisor,” and that I was “absolutely ready for the position,” and also that “you’re obviously going to be in a supervisory role very soon,” all that did was throw another log on the fire about how I’m just spinning my wheels with this company these days.  It doesn’t appear that there is a “fair way” to get into these jobs.  They are just handed down politically and without any real consideration for what will really benefit the company.

Some of the feedback that I received was as follows:

“Your resume is solid and filled with previous leadership experience.  What I missed in the interview is how that would look in a Supervisor role at Best Buy.”

Um?  Hello?  We spent nearly an hour with one another talking about what changes I would make, the way that I supervised my employees in the past, the successes that I’ve had with my previous experiences, and the level of training that I bring to the job that no one else possesses, and you couldn’t see “how that would look in a Supervisor role at Best Buy?”  Sorry, but I don’t buy that one at all…either that, or you simply weren’t listening to our conversation.  But it went on…

“Likewise, you seem to have good selling skills.   How would that translate to teaching and coaching behaviors on the floor. I would encourage you to get more actively engaged in the work your leaders are doing in store.”

Um?  Hello again?  Were you listening when I said that as a sales associate, I was top 5 in sales in 16 out of 18 months in sales, and number one 8 times?  By the way, most of those months were as a PART TIME sales associate, and I was outselling all of the full timers in the entire store.  As far as teaching and coaching behaviors, there was apparently some cotton in your ears when we talked about my coaching and development of half a dozen associates currently working that have all seen increased levels of their hourly productivity, in addition to seeing massive increases in the revenues in our department.  Not to mention all the training and development that went into the store as a Consultation Agent.  Must’ve missed that part of the interview I suppose.  And perhaps I should do more things like the managers in my store…like not focus on sales at all, but rather hold a clip board and point out the things that other people should be doing to make the store look prettier so that when the District Representatives walk through the store, they don’t get their wrists slapped as hard.  Maybe that’s what you had in mind.

Bottom line, my faith in this company is waning quickly.  The feeling of being undervalued and underappreciated has been consuming me each time I walk through the doors.  And to top it off, I have a growing chasm of difference from the way that I would want to run and operate the store versus what is actually happening, and all the while I see our department, our staff, and our teams being depleted of good talent because they are being grossly undercompensated and undertrained and underutilized, then leaving to find other areas of opportunity within the organization.  I have said so many times before that I need to find another company to work for….and I hope that I get the balls together to put in some applications and do some of the interviews with other companies because right now, I’m so tired of doing this over and over again.  I really am fitting the definition of insanity.

That’s it for now.  I’ve rambled on long enough.  I’ll see about getting the rest of the week’s activities up in a blog either tomorrow or Friday.  I should be able to make that happen with the kids being on Spring Break this week, and not having to go into work until 2pm on both days.  Until then, I’m going to focus in on the fantastic turn of events that has happened the last couple of days with my vacation with Traci and taking the kids to a great show tonight.

Back in December Traci and I switched our home telephone, cable, and internet provision from AT&T U-Verse to Time Warner Cable.  The transition was absolutely brutal and was filled with countless flaws.  I wrote a blog about the complete mess that Time Warner made of the transition, posted it on PablosPlace (you can read it here) and when it hit online, I immediately got a response from Time Warner via their twitter, apologizing for the mishaps and “escalating our matter to corporate.”  The subsequent escalation resulted in a conversation with a lady named Glenda, who did what she could to make the situation better, and for the most part, she was able to put a band-aide on the situation.

Bottom line, Glenda addressed the issues that we had point by point, scheduled a technician to come back out to the house to provide the correct equipment, and adjusted our bill to a closer to promised rate, and we made peace with the fact that they weren’t going to own up to the $89.99 per month rate that the flyer clearly indicated.  It was a concession on both of our ends, but ultimately we were going to have the service that was promised to us at the beginning, and we’d be ok with the rate that we’d be paying as it would still be saving us roughly $20 a month by switching services.  If we’d only have known how much of a bargain with the devil that we would have made….

Time Warner has been consistently poor since we activated their services with a “go-ahead” on December 4^th, and their first installation on December 11^th.  The following week, they finally installed all of the equipment that they promised, and it only worked intermittently.  The DVR device then, and even now, cuts off recordings at the end of the shows and sometimes cuts them off mid show.  The internet connection only works intermittently and didn’t at all in our bedroom until I went out and purchased additional equipment (which I was not reimbursed for) to get internet in our room.  And now, the company is completely ignoring our requests to redeem the $150 Best Buy Gift Card that they promised us within the first 90 Days of activation, as well as the Xbox 360 4gb Console that was supposed to be a part of the deal.  I’ll get into each of these items in detail, now.

Firstly, after the installer completed his work inside our home for the third time in a week, we finally had what we considered to be decent service.  The cable worked, the phone worked, the internet worked.  It lasted for about a week when things changed.  The internet was the first thing to present problems as it was extremely slow in the latter stages of the day, even dropping the signal completely if multiple devices were in use at the same time.  Down in our bedroom, about 150 feet away from where the router was installed, the internet connection was poor.  It would often go from 3 out of 4 bars of signal, back down to zero or one bar, and then back up again.  Any devices that were connected to the WiFi in our bedroom dropped signal repeatedly, which for Traci, who spends a large percentage of her time on her iPad and her iPhone in our bedroom, presented a very large problem.  So bad was the signal that our cell phone bill was charged for exceeding our internet data plan for the very first time in the history of us having cellular plans, with the only addition to our service being the dropping of WiFi inside our own home.  It was pathetic.

We contacted Time Warner yet again who went through a series of checks on the connections.  They verified that the signal was in fact “working,” but we eventually convinced them that they needed to send out a technician to check the problem that we were reporting in our home.  It took some convincing, but out came another TWC install technician.  Upon seeing that our internet was in fact not working as we claimed, the technician installed a Netgear N150 Router that he placed a few feet away from the modem, and declared the problem fixed.  This actually helped for another couple of days, until the router apparently died.  About a week into the “new solution”, the router wasn’t giving off any signal.  We called technical support yet again and spent nearly 90 minutes on the phone between being transferred around, until a technician finally was set to come back out to the house.  This time, I spoke with the retentions department and voiced my concerns over the inability to use our services despite the fact that we were paying for them.  He issued me a credit for the broken equipment, and set up a technician to come out and install the Time Warner Cable High Speed Internet which supposedly carried with it a much stronger router, which should provide a much better signal that would hopefully reach the bedroom.  Note that I said hopefully.

The new High Speed Internet Service, which is more expensive that the one that we initially signed up for, was given to us at our same rate for the first 6 months.  The installer came out within a day or so to uninstall the N-150 router, claiming that this wasn’t something that Time Warner Cable did, or ever did do, but disconnected it and took it with him nonetheless. He then proceeded to begin the installation of the High Speed Internet which required completely different connections.  Midway through the installation, a second Time Warner Cable installer showed up indicating that he received instructions to “disconnect our service completely.”  The second installer, along with his unusual request came clear out of the blue sky.  Traci turned him away and the first installer there helped prove what it was that was actually being done.  Obviously someone had made yet another mistake at Time Warner.

The High Speed Internet solution didn’t fix the internet problem in the bedroom however.  As I entered into discussions about possible alternatives with the installer, he recommended a wireless range extender be installed in our bedroom.  So mid installation, I went into my Best Buy store to pick a $79 wireless range extender, and a new power surge protector with additional outlets as the new item would require more than what we currently had to supply.  The two items cost nearly $150.  I returned home, installed the wireless range extender and configured it myself, and low and behold the WiFi in our bedroom was now working.  It took multiple trips and a $150 investment, but we finally got the internet connection that we were after.

The next part of the story is the most baffling.  When we signed up for the service in December, it was on the flyer the different promotions that we’d be receiving.  I want to read to you, verbatim, the language that was on the flyer:

“This holiday, activate select packages from Time Warner Cable starting at $89.99 a month.  Packages include TV, internet and Phone.  Get a $150 Best Buy Gift Card AND an Xbox 360 4gb Console, plus Free DVR Service for 12 months (when you sign up equipment extra) and Free HBO, The Movie Channel, Showtime, Cinemax for 3 months when you sign up. “

Then in small print the following was said right after.  Pay special attention to the words in this part:

“Best Buy Gift Card sent by mail.  Xbox 360 4GB console available after installation of services.  1-800-TWCable anytime to cancel.  Regular rates apply after promotion periods.  Recurring bill pay required for premium channels.”

That was the flyer.  It had the Time Warner Cable logos on it, the contact of Ramiro Salazar, the guy who sold us our package.  It said “Sign up here today!” and that was it.  After a couple of conversations with Ramiro about how the program was exactly the same as the one that we had in our home currently with the same exact setup, we were stoked about the deals.  But, here we are in March.  Today is the 12^th.  That marks today being the 92^nd day since the date of installation.  And guess what….we don’t have an Xbox in our house, and we don’t have a $150 gift card.  And so began the follow up calls to Time Warner customer service to follow up on their promotions that they promised us.

Now mind you, in several of the many calls that we have placed to Time Warner Cable, we have asked about the promotions.  With regard to the Gift Card, it was explained that in order to receive the $150, we would have to remain current on our bill for 90 days, and then they would send it to us in the mail.  That was all well and good.  It’s 3 months later however and we’re growing skeptical of whether or not the $150 is in fact showing up because of what is happening with the Xbox, and because of the responses of each of the Customer Service Representatives and the Supervisors of those Customer Service Representatives have responded with.  With respect to the Xbox, Time Warner has uniformly admitted that they have NO RECORD OF THE XBOX Promotion.  They instead said that they would send an email to escalations and that someone would be in contact with us regarding the promotion.  Weeks have gone by, and no call.  So last week, we followed up yet again and were told that we needed to contact Best Buy for Business Marketing and Promotions to claim the Xbox prize, as it was supposed to be sent by them.

So now Traci gets on the phone and called the BBFB Marketing Department and the people are extremely nice.  But their response was as expected.  Basically, they can’t release the Xbox until Time Warner Cable clears them to do it, which typically takes place IMMEDIATELY after the service is activated.  They also stated that it would make sense that we should be receiving this incentive, as it was the promotion that was running in all Best Buy Stores at the time that our service was setup, and that Time Warner Cable should know about the promotion.  Basically, everything that they said we expected, and we realized that Time Warner Cable was worse than the most terrible chain of customer service that has ever existed.  Time Warner Cable is now just a bald faced liar that is trying to milk us of our cash, and screw us over.  Now….we were more than pissed.

Traci and I went down this morning to the Time Warner Cable offices on Topanga Canyon Blvd. in Chatsworth, armed with the flyer that Ramiro had given us upon our installation.  This process was recommended to us by one of the customer service reps of TWC who apparently didn’t believe that we’d received the promotion because it didn’t appear in her notes.  But into the office we went and surprisingly enough, we received the EXACT SAME RESPONSE IN PERSON that we’ve received over the phone the whole time.  Despite being as nice as she could possibly be, and being apathetic and apologetic, the kind lady basically informed us that just like every single person that we’ve ever spoken to at Time Warner, that there was nothing that she could do, and that all she could do was send another email to escalations and that someone would be in contact with us.  She even went so far as to tell us that she’d “like to get my supervisor, but he isn’t in today.”  When we asked her when he would be in, she said that she didn’t know because he divides his time over multiple offices and that she doesn’t know when the next time is that he’ll be in.  We asked her for a phone number to either escalations or to corporate so that we could follow up with the situation.  She apparently didn’t have any of those numbers, or she wasn’t going to give it up.  I simply just began laughing at her and exclaimed in front of the large group of customers that was gathered in the lobby how I couldn’t believe how poorly run this company was, and how they managed to stay in business by taking advantage of their customers.

The entire experience with Time Warner is without question the worst experience that I have ever had with any company ever.  I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt more taken advantage of.  The best part about having our current Time Warner service has been watching all of the “Switch to Time Warner Cable” commercials that run incessantly throughout every single program break that is on.  The cable commercial encourages people to “come back to Time Warner.”  “Give us a try,” they say, “and if you’re not satisfied, we’ll give you your money back.”  I’m in utter disbelief.

So here is what I am claiming.  We will be eventually cancelling our Time Warner Cable Service. How they could ever expect that we would actually stay with them is completely and utterly ridiculous.  It will come when we have got two things.

1)      We want the promotions that were promised to us.   They owe us at least that much for the headache, the stress, and all of the countless lost hours that we have spent without internet, without working cable, waiting for installers, on the phone with inept customer service reps, supervisors and other Time Warner Cable Reps.  The other money that we’ve spent so that we could get their equipment to actually work gets thrown into this as well, and we’d like to be reimbursed for that equipment that we can no longer return as it is outside of the return policy.

2)      The second item will be setting up another provider for our Cable, Internet, and home telephone.  I don’t care if I have to pay $500 a month.  I don’t care if I have to pay $1000.  As long as I don’t ever have to deal with Time Warner Cable EVER again, the extra monthly amount will be well worth it.

The saddest part of the entire ordeal has been my reluctance to get back on my site and bad mouth Time Warner Cable for all of their shortcomings.  I didn’t want to blog about this.  I really wanted to believe in them when they told me that they were going to make the situation right.  But here we are, being passed over by customer service who “can do nothing other than send the items to escalations,” and then being blatantly ignored by their corporate offices.  Either no one in the entire company has the capability of doing their job at the company, or they are purposely going out of their way to anger us.  My only guess as to why they are blatantly ignoring us as a customers is that their offices are so full with people that they have completely screwed over, that they just haven’t had a chance to get back to us yet.  And now, how am I supposed to feel like a valued customer.  Sorry Time Warner, you lose.  And I’ll be on here repeatedly telling the story about how bad you’re screwing your customers until you can do something to finally fix it.

I now have very little faith that escalations will get back with us, and I have very little faith that they will come through with what they’ve promised, or that even though they advertise on television that there is a money back guarantee, that they’ll deliver.  I suspect that this horrid company will try and find a way out of their commitments and that we will be left with nothing other than the broken promise that “If you aren’t satisfied, you can get your money back.”  Laugh if you will with me….because we all know that money back just ISN’T happening.

I feel like I’ve lost my lust for playing the last year or so, where I just don’t have the same passion for it that I once used to.  This blog was originally put together with the intent on sending out messages to everyone about the home game, and reporting about the results.  This was long before Facebook was a dream in Zuckerberg’s head, and long before we really communicated in mass texts or through GroupMe.  In the beginning, PablosPlace was somewhat of a joke that happened to manifest itself as my private little sanctuary that became a public journal of sorts that everyone seemed to enjoy.  And so I continued writing whatever was on top of my head, and people seemed to like it, presenting me with inspiration to continue writing here and sharing my life experiences when I was motivated to write about them.

Last Friday’s game was a sense of relief.  It was a simple escape from our broken vehicles (which we paid a bloody fortune to have them fixed now….finally), our financial stresses (which we seem to have caught up on), and a night where we could once again sit around a table as friends, and laugh. We drank some beers, enjoyed Andrew’s homemade ice cream that he had earlier concocted with our children, and combined it with some A&W Root Beer for floats.  And while we tossed the cards and chips around, we simply enjoyed one another’s company, and we laughed.  It was good therapy.  In the end, I ended up with all the chips after a long battle heads up with Andrew, where he had climbed out of a fantastic hole to take a lead, but fell just short.  The night was enjoyed by everyone, echoing the sentiment that we simply need to do this more often.

Now that the dust has settled from our income tax refund, and the reinvestment in the process of catching up on all the items that we’d fallen behind on, it becomes time to move forward with what our year plans to hold. This week, Traci and I plan on publicly launching our new business venture, a partnership with Premiere Designs Jewelry. We’ve made an investment in the company with an intent on bringing some joy to the girls that we know in our lives (and given the fact that I live with five of them, we know a lot) by adding a little bit of bling, for a small investment.  I was surprised at how good the selection of jewelry actually was, and the investment of capital and time was small enough that it made perfect sense for the fun that we would have in putting together shows with the family for our friends and loved ones.  The official announcement will come soon as Traci and I put together a business plan of sorts, but be on the lookout for a contact from us soon as we begin our newest venture in life.

That’s all for now.  Just a quick little blurb, but the next one will likely be chatting about the business with as much information as I can possibly divulge.  I’m excited for what is in store, just like I’m excited about the potential for another supervisor position at another store.  I applied for the Lifestyles Supervisor position in the Porter Ranch location, and we’ll see about the interview in the coming days.  I’ve learned not to set my expectations very high, and simply give them everything that I can in the interview, hoping that it’s enough.  But I’m definitely looking forward to my next blog already….just need to find the fast forward button for life first.